I have dedicated this website as an additional source for information for the various Linux based operating systems (and Berkley Software Division [BSD] too) for the people of Snohomish County, WA and the surrounding area. SNOLUG strongly advocates the use of Open Source software and the Linux operating system. Club members meet in my home until a more established location can be secured. Meetings will be held at 5:00 PM on the first Sunday of every month.

At the next meeting we'll discuss the different small/compact Linux distros available. Bring a friend too! Feel free to go to www.kernel.org and download your kernel and (until the next meeting) scroll through the code for the Linux kernel of your choice! I installed openSUSE 13.2 on my 64-bit Toshiba Satellite and it runs sweet! It did take a long time to install due to the large amount of software loaded. Everything works great. I got Fedora 20 but have yet to install it and see what it looks like. I'm lovin' Debian 7.8 with no GUI though! I am using this as the build distro for a "Linux From Scratch" 7.6 build.

Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Slackware 14.1, Fedora 21, Crux 2.8, Debian 8.0, openSUSE 13.2, Trisquel 7.0 (FSF approved I might add), Mageia 2, and Linux From Scratch 7.6 (www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/download.html) have been released! There is also a new fork appearing from Debian developers who left to start this project. It is called Devuan. There website is www.devuan.org. For the BSD enthusiasts, FreeBSD 10.1, NetBSD 6.1.3, and OpenBSD 5.5 are also available!

Do you now want to switch to a document or web server running a particular Linux distro? Are you just curious about Linux? You say you don't like those viruses, spyware, malware, and trojans! Are you looking for more than just the current proprietal operating systems out there in the marketplace today? Using a Linux distribution (commonly called a "distro") and Open Source software, you can --- and will --- be more productive! With Linux and Open Source software you can have that peace of mind your looking for in getting the most productivity for your business! If you don't like the look (or Graphical User Interface (GUI) of one particular Linux distro, you can always choose another GUI, or for that matter, you can change the distro, or if you choose you can actually run a Linux system without ANY GUI or even a window manager like FVVM, BlackBox, Window Maker, etc. It is flexible as Linux gives you many choices to choose from!

Linux has evolved greatly since the days of kernel 2.2 and ipchains, so if you are one of those who hasn't checked it out lately, now is the time! If you are new to the Linux operating system, did you know you can even try some Linux distros without even installing it onto the hard drive by just running the Linux operating system right off the CD or DVD itself!

Linux is fast becoming THE player in business configured as a server. It can be a nice desktop for home or office or even be configured in a minimal configuration for use such as a firewall box. Linux has been designed to do work from the start and even has networking capabilities built in to the system!

Linux is a great desktop for multimedia tasks, a web server, a database server, a document server using the Samba suite of programs, managing programming projects and source code with "git", browsing the World Wide Web, or creating various types of documents either in an Open Source Office suite or just a simple text editor.

You can do anything you currently do with your current operating system in Linux - you just have to use a different program in your particular Linux distro to do it. Using a Linux/Open Source operating system is more cost effective than proprietal operating systems currently on the market! For the business minded, because it is more cost effective in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), the results for your company mean more profit for you not having to pay for those license fees! For the people new to Linux, SNOLUG recommends either Linux Mint 17, or Debian 7. If you feel "frisky" and feel the urge to "get under the hood" of a similiar *nix clone type operating system, checkout FreeBSD at their website - www.freebsd.org! If you are a power Linux user already, you should already be checking out Slackware Linux at their website - www.slackware.com!